Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Tuesday December 21, 2010 @11:39AM
from the lets-go-spelunking dept.

An anonymous reader writes "...the rule, which will be voted on during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet. The rule is so riddled with loopholes that it's become clear that this FCC chairman crafted it with the sole purpose of winning the endorsement of AT&T and cable lobbyists, and not defending the interests of the tens of millions of Internet users."

Obama's job on the issue of "Net Neutrality" is much like Bush's ballyhooed "Healthy Forests" initiative: a back-stabbing lie, designed to surrender sovereignty to private corporations and enforce this degradation with the power of law.

Based on the article (and the ones it linked), I'm not ready to draw too many conclusions yet. It's a complex issue and the article is really just a screed.

What I'd like to see is a collection of use-cases.

For example, I use an ooma device for phone, whereas I'm sure Comcast prefer I use their phone service. In what ways, if any, will Comcast still be allowed to discriminate against data to/from Ooma? (Not that I've noticed any issues so far).

The only way to achieve net neutrality is to break up the big telcos. Telephone companies should not be broadband providers or content providers: period. Cable television companies should not be broadband providers, period. They have to spin off those divisions and keep them completely separate.

Yes, it's time to break up the telcos, yet again.

But that's not going to happen, so it's best to just assume the internet is going to become cable TV.

I'm hoping for research into (I forgot what they're called) "honeycomb" networks that are basically internets without a backbone. Sort of an amateur radio internet. I don't really care if I can stream video. I just want to be sure I can get wikileaks and Slashdot.

He is worse in that he advertised so heavily that he was not as bad, and would bring a government that cared about the people rather than corporations. That was his mandate. Now people are finding that he is in fact a political huckster sucking so hard on the corporate cock that he is indistinguishable from a republican corporate whore. Personally I am not surprised as I never believe hype that is pushed as hard as his campaign and supporters pushed at us. I will admit that I am disappointed.

I think the American political support of corporations will self correct however. Unfortunately it will be when the rest of the world overtakes America economically. When the U.S. finds itself dying economically because the corporate stranglehold on innovation a fair competition finally kills any pretense of the U.S. having sound business sense/thinking. Granted with 300 million people it will be a slow and painful death, but it will happen.

The thing is, it has already started. China, Brazil, Russia, and India are becoming economic powerhouses (Brazil's economy is growing like gangbusters right now, and is expected to move up a place to be the seventh largest economy in the world in 2011... China will stay at number 2). If the EU finally gets its head out of its own ass and works together, it collectively can become one of the top three or four economies. But they need to balance their budgets and stop thinking they deserve one month summer vacations and free daycare and all their welfare state mentalities. And especially stop listening to U.S. lobbyists who want the E.U. to jump off the corporate control cliff with them.

What puzzles me is that there are so many Americans that run around claiming they need guns because they can't trust the government. Meanwhile it seems like the corporations are fucking them over even harder. Mind you they are doing it by controlling the government. So maybe they have something there.

"To date, the FCC hasn't ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and

I don't have to "pine" for a chance to call people statist - there are ample opportunities for that these days.

Just so you know, I used to be a very outspoken supporter of net neutrality. That is, until the modis operandi of the rulers in Washington became clear. They have no interest in doing anything that doesn't expand their power - and despite the attempts to educate the legislators what was meant by "network neutrality", it quickly became clear that what they were fishing for was an excuse to implem

In the end it's a central authority with too much power over you. Who cares if it's pure "government" or government proxying a small subset of companies? The end result is the same, it's still bad.

This is why I've been saying for years that the only real solution to our nation's Internet service problems is for the government to create a nonprofit organization that manages the last-mile infrastructure and leases access to corporations that compete for the right to package and sell the services. That organi

However, at the same time, we'll never know which proposals are particularly egregious because any competently put together "net neutrality" policy will necessarily be very complex, and will necessarily require input from the IT/provider business community.

So even if it were a good proposal, it could still be called "full of loopholes" and "lobbyist driven" by anyone disingenuous enough to cherry pick from it and misrepresent it. Given we rely on journalism to boil these things down, and the total lack of ethics and objectivity in journalism these days, we are guaranteed to hear this same thing about each and every proposal for "net neutrality" that gets anywhere near the finish line.

Your rule is uncompromising - what happens when Anonymous decide to DDoS some poor 14 year old who criticised them on his self-hosted blog?

The ISP may be able to handle 10GB/sec, but his ADSL line won't - plus of course the issues that 10GB/sec of traffic the ISP can do nothing about hitting their network... whats that going to do for other subscribers?

More importantly, what if a carrier network is carrying VoIP traffic? Your rule would make it illegal to give 911 calls priority over all other traffic, and would undermine the ideas of QoS. I agree with your rule in spirit, but it needs some amendments to be practical.

As someone who works for a telephony carrier, I can tell you for a fact that you we DO to handle QoS as well as the user. Its a regulatory requirement in the USA. First, most of the time any QoS markings placed on either a traditional or voip call get wiped out at the first hop, because users otherwise would start marking themselves as higher priority than other users. It's a basic security concern mentioned in most network books when they describe QoS. Then after you strip off that stuff, you usually start using DSCP markers and MPLS, and above that you've got routing decisions to go with different carriers to reach the destination based on the cost to use their lines. All of these decisions get modified when its an emergency call. And yes, those calls do get misrouted sometimes; and there's hell to pay for it. Just like any other regulatory call.

Oh but you are missing the sneakier way they are gonna get you...caps. I'm in one of the test markets for the new caps, which BTW are 36GB for residential, and 76GB for business. Now that is $106! for the bundle with basic cable and phone, or $180! for the "business" which is the same just with a higher cap. Now here is how they get you:

Vonage? Counts against the cap. Their VoIP? Don't. Linux and Mac updates? Count. Windows? Don't because they got "donated" a WSUS server. Anyone other than Netflix and Youtube? Counts. Their PPV along with Youtube and Netflix? Don't, and the only reason you are allowed Youtube and Netflix is they paid to put a local server. Starting to see a trend?

At $1.50 a GB and a low cap it really doesn't take much to "steer" your customer wherever you want them to go. Remember the days of the AOL walled garden? Well its about to be back boys and girls. Sure you can go where they don't want you to, but it will cost you out the ass. Stay in this nice little garden and we won't bend you over the barrel.

For all those that were "corporation yay!" you are about to get a taste of what uncontrolled greed is like, and you ain't gonna like it! We in the USA will be shuttled onto the short bus of the information superhighway while the rest of the world gets 100MBs+ lines and looks at us as the backwater that we are. I mean when the backwaters of fricking Romania have higher speeds than NYC and LA? Well something is VERY wrong here.

It would be illegal under your scheme to give real time or streaming applications priority. Try again. How about, "No Internet provider shall discriminate based on end-points." Discriminate by type of traffic, sure. Discriminate based on where it came from or where it is going, no.

I'm sorry this is long. I tried to narrow it down to 2 sentences that would get noticed by mods, but I can't do it...

It would be illegal under your scheme to give real time or streaming applications priority.

No, it means it would be illegal for *the ISP* to determine the priority. That's probably a good thing. To understand why, one must determine two things: 1) Who determines priority, and 2) What does priority actually do?

1) The ISP and cannot determine the priority, and they should not try.In theory, an ISP could use deep packet inspection to guess a priority. Packet A looks like email, packet B looks like a youtube video stream, packet C seems encrypted on an odd port: so it doesn't know. But in reality Packet A is an email with a Powerpoint presentation that someone needs in 2 minutes for a video conference. Packet B is streaming porn. Packet C is a video game where latency is vital. So which of these packets gets priority? There's simply no fair answer, and even if we could agree to one there's no way for the ISP's routers to determine this.

The TCP/IP protocol is designed to allow the *sender and receiver* to determine the priority. The problem is this relies on the honor system. If someone turns on BitTorrent and sets it to send packets as high QOS, then they are a jerk and they might slow things down for everyone (including themselves - they likely will have trouble browsing the web on their own network.)

2) What to do with the priority?Priority mostly matters when you are saturating your bandwidth. If I am sending an email and it means your streaming video slows down, it doesn't mean you need priority. It means the ISP is out of bandwidth and needs to upgrade their pipes. Priority doesn't speed up packets, it merely slows down other packets. This is why giving ISPs the ability to determine priority is bad. It means they don't have to upgrade their networks to handle the traffic, it just means they can take "undesirables" who use lots of bandwidth and make them pay extra, without having to invest in their networks.

Indeed it does, and since the FCC insists on crafting Law (a job I THINK was left to Congress in our Constitution) I think it is time Congress exercise her other power; that of the purse string:
De-fund the FCC!

No clue. yesterday, I was advocating Net Neutrality in a discussion here on Slashdot, and I continue to advocate for it. What the FCC is showing here, however, is not what I and other like-minded folks are advocating. I think the first post has it right...money runs things.

PS: Sincere apologies to those who told me to read up yesterday...now that I have, I can see why you're calling bullshit. Please note that my support of Net Neutrality stands, but not this version of it.

If ISPs did not oversell you wouldn't need the ISP.Try signing up for a not oversold connection. See how much a DS3 in your house costs. It is only ~45 megabit, not that fast right ?

A full, non fractional DS3 might be around $4000 per month.

That's a bit crazy, how about a normal Ethernet connection. We pay around $500 for every 20 megabit, every month. We're currently hovering around 25 megabit steady so we pay for 40 to be ready for spikes etc. Anyone can get this, pay a grand a month and get 40 megabit ho

That's not the version that I would push for personally. The quintessential example is trading latency for bandwidth. VoIP doesn't require much bandwidth, but needs as low latency as possible to function properly. Bit Torrent is the opposite, you could have 10 second latency values and get basically the same quality of service as if you had 10 ms, so long as the bandwidth is high. In an ideal world maybe every service would have access to low latency and high bandwidth pipe, but you can get much better

We could at least have low priced, fast, and fair service like most of the rest of the first world has. How about, oh I don't know, instead of charging us more, they reduce their profits to a fair and reasonable level? Why is it always the little guy who has to tighten his belt?

I'm not saying we regulate their profits, I am asking, how come it is always the little guy who has to pay? They are making huge profits, yet they claim that any costs that impact their bottom line will be passed right on to the consumer. Isn't the free market supposed to provide competition that drives down prices? Why, if that is the case, do the socialist first world countries have FAR better, and CHEAPER Internet service than we do, on average? Isn't that fact an indictment of the free market? Or would

I wasn't attempting to refute anything you were saying, just adding to it. So I certainly hope it supports your point.:) I find it astounding that the statement you made, "market failures necessitate corrective action by the government in order to foster efficient competitive markets," is at all controversial, but it is very controversial these days. Everyone, left and right, seems to have bought into market fundamentalism. Perhaps because market fundamentalism provides the elite with two things: more mone

The people of the USA could have stopped it if they were actually interested in performing their civic duty and not just in bread and circuses [wikipedia.org]. Our political obligations don't end with voting. Do you seriously think that any anti-net neutrality legislation would be rubber-stamped if even 1000 people gathered outside of the capital and refused to leave until their voices were heard? 10,000? 100,000? A million? The country is a fading empire; history is repeating itself, and the country will fade just like Rome did.

The ace in the hole for net neutrality is the latest crop of cheap TVs with built-in Netflix and other online services. My in-laws just purchased one a few months ago and they use Netflix constantly. These are dye-in-the-wool, Ann Coulter-reading, FOXNews-watching Republicans. I mentioned to my father-in-law about net neutrality being a big issue. He had never heard of it. When I explained the ramifications for their Netflix usage, his response was to immediately support it. It will be interesting to see this shake out. This is another chance where we can see if FOX and Rush can convince more people to act against their own self interest in support of some bastardization of "freedom."

Why not deregulate the industry and disallow the cable company monopolies (such as Comcast for example) out there so that we actually have competition? That way if any ISP decides to bill "multi-tier" approach, you can vote with your wallet?

I've always felt that as nice as Net Neutrality is, it works better as a set of Principles than as a set of Laws or Regulations.

The big problem in the ISP industry is not too little regulation, it's too MUCH. A huge part of the barrier to entry is the established legal monopolies and right-of-way laws. If we can get those removed and just allow anyone with the wherewithal to run some fiber, then the pricing and competition issues will go away.

You mean regulate, right? There used to be a regulation the required telcos to sell their lines at wholesale to competitors but they removed that regulation so that telcos were as unregulated as cable companies (with regards to internet service).

The local monopolies these ISPs enjoy are not a regulation but rather a grant/partnership of various cities/towns/etc to the cable/telco operator as well as some natural monopolies due to the giants being the only ones with infrastructure. The kind of competition you are promoting is exactly what we need, but don't kid yourself that there are federal regulations that are creating these local monopolies.

How about the government retaining all control of and maintenance responsibility for any service which requires the power of eminent domain or enforced easements to implement. This would include the road systems, sewer systems, power systems, cable and telephone networks, etc. In the 1790 timeframe, roads were basically the only thing that were required for transportation and commerce. The Federal government was given responsibility for the roads, because it made sense for the people to own the infrastru

It is Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, among others, who have been warning you idiots that this was what you were going to get when the FCC created a "Net Neutrality" regulation. They keep telling you that the big corporations like regulation because it lets them get stronger control of the market and you keep telling them to stop shilling for the corporations. Then when new regulations are passed that give more power to the corporations, you blame the people who told you that was going to happen if you kept pushing for more regulations.

Obama's net neutrality pledge was one of the reasons I voted for him after voting for Republican presidential candidates for so many years. (That, and attempting to right the wrong of voting for dubya--twice.) It is now clear to me that they are ALL a bunch of lying hypocrites. And that I'm just not as smart as I thought I was...

I voted for him after voting for Republican presidential candidates for so many years.

Vote early and vote often. There are other offices where power is controlled in the government. The US Constitution, in fact, requires that the president not be able to enact any sort of change (except maybe declaring war for a year or two) without support of his Congress.

The Congress during the past two years, despite being Democrat majority, has been hugely influenced by obstructionist Republicans.

At the end of the day... these stalemates in Congress benefit the people because they prevent any sort

The election went the way it did because Obama never puts up a fight over anything.

Unfortunately he doesn't realize that fact and thinks it's because he is fighting too much, so expect him to compromise on everything now and cave in to the demands of Republicans. He thinks making them happy will make everyone happy.

I've been reading Matt Taibbi's book, "Griftopia" (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953), and having worked in finance for ~10 years, I'm coming to realize more and more that the powers that be -- corporations, CEOs, and everybody that's basically not *you* are the people who are going to run the US for the coming future. A leaked memo from Citigroup (http://www.scribd.com/doc/36059255/23321255-Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Leaked-Citigroup-Memo-Part1) has already declared the US a Plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).

This is just another shot in the arm against a citizenry whose arms are already falling off from the shots before. The FCC coming up with a plan to (surprise surprise) support the plutocracy that we've already been labelled by Wall Street is not even a stretch any more. And while the Tea Party clamors about how government is trying to socialize everything, they miss that problem that the government has been co-opted in stealing America as a whole from the citizens themselves, and they are happy to have the folks in the Tea Party carry their banner without realizing what damage they are doing.

I am a bit demoralized nowadays about all this -- and I'd love to take action but I don't know how. So while we as nerds who normally argue, bitch, and complain can actually stand up and figure a way to do something about this (short of something 4chan would do), then I'd be all for it. Let's strategize. Let's plan. And let's execute in the perfect ways I know that we can do thousands of lines of code, deploying hundreds of servers, or anything else "IT" that we do.

I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.

I am a bit demoralized nowadays about all this -- and I'd love to take action but I don't know how. So while we as nerds who normally argue, bitch, and complain can actually stand up and figure a way to do something about this (short of something 4chan would do), then I'd be all for it. Let's strategize. Let's plan. And let's execute in the perfect ways I know that we can do thousands of lines of code, deploying hundreds of servers, or anything else "IT" that we do.

I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.

This is my problem, too. Telling the government what we want and what is right hasn't worked. Voting hasn't worked. I'm certain there must be a few more steps we can take before attempting to shoot government leaders is the right answer, though. I just don't have a clue what those next steps might be.

Well, we nerds have access to a lot more technology than just IT servers and programming code. I am pretty sure there are nerds from every walk of life on here. Myself, I'm a space nerd. I can tell you how to design the control systems of spacecraft, plus a few other nifty tricks. So add that skill to your basket of nerd tricks.

Anyways, I don't want to start rambling, but if you really want a call to arms, then the action that I think you/we could take that would be best would to be to start our own prop

I'm here to start the call to arms, I just don't know what to do after that.

I'll probably be blacklisted for saying this, but what the hell --

During most of the last century, we had an active, well-organized left in the U.S. Their simple method was to organize people to work together for their own interests against wealthier, more powerful organizations. They accomplished a lot -- getting negroes the right to vote in the south, building a union movement that guaranteed working people a better standard of living than they have today, Social Security, Medicare, a social safety net, and most of the progressive reforms we had then and are losing now. The left worked best by being militant, threatening liberal Democrats, Republicans and unions, and pushing them further to the left -- just as conservative extremists push them to the right today.

I once read a memo from one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's aides to his boss, about how, on the street corners of Harlem, Communist orators were attracting crowds, and if the government didn't respond to their needs, the Communists would become more influential. During the depression, in negro neighborhoods, when people were disposessed from their homes and their posessions put out on the sidewalks, the Communists would mobilize a crowd, march to the home, and move the families and their posessions back in. It seems clear that FDR was pushed to the left by the socialist and Communist movement.

The Communist Party had horrible problems, the worst of which was requiring its members to follow the Party line, even during Stalin's worst brutalities. (See George Orwell's Homage to Catalona.) But the Communists knew how to organize workers, including socialists and other allies (whom they often double-crossed), and they had a network that let them organize around the country (and the world).

If the FBI is to be believed, Communists organized the Highlander Folk School, which taught Martin Luther King how to organize, starting with the Montgomery bus boycott. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_Research_and_Education_Center [wikipedia.org] (This raises the question, "What was the FBI doing to guarantee negroes the right to vote during all those years?") If you want to know how to organize for change, a study of the civil rights movement is instructive.

Almost every Communist reached a point where he got disgusted and left the party. They often went on to use their organizing techniques to organize other political organizations, like the civil rights movement, the peace movement in the Vietnam war days, and the gay rights movement. Hold a meeting, collect names and phone numbers, call them all to remind them to show up at the next demonstration, and use your numbers to get attention. Demand fundamental change, not compromises. Large demonstrations were a good way to show your strength. The Communist Party was to politics what General Electric was to corporate management -- people worked there, learned, left, and spread their techniques everywhere.

The best thing the left did in this country was to push compromising politicians further to the left. Too bad we didn't have a Communist Party to push Obama to keep his promises and create a public option health plan. The most important message of the left is that we have to change the system, and we have to change it ourselves. We can't depend on leaders to do it for us. (People on the left saw through Obama a mile away.)

Eugene Debs said: "I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition."

The more the government regulates the more powerful corporations become. It's really easy, fight government regulation. Work to reduce the amount that government regulates economic activity. Government regulations always favor larger companies over smaller companies. I am not arguing for no government regulation, but for minimal government regulation.
There are too many people who agitate for government regulation to fix problems created by government regulation. The solution to problems created by the government is to get rid of whatever element of government caused the problem, not by creating new government regulations.

The whole financial melt down was a product of the success of government regulation of the financial markets. The financial firms over extended themselves and the government bailed them out at the expense of the little guy and then passed laws to make it harder for the little guy to make money in the market.

The financial meltdown happened because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (quais-governmental organizations) were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government. The way that government regulation encouraged banks and other financial institutions to take risky actions is complicated, but if you trace the actions of various government agents you can see how they lead to the problem.
Sorry, I've already paid for that bridge thanks to the government th

... because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government.

Yes, and that explains why foreign real estate markets crashed, too.

A nice right-wing talking point not born out by the facts. In fact, FNMA and FMCC did not start taking large percentages of high risk loans until well after private firms did. And why did they? Yes, politicians on the left were asking them to make homes more affordable. What is missed by the conservatards is that politicians on the right were doing the same thing - they called it spreading the American Dream - and they thought that if the GSEs were raking in the kind of money that Countrywide, et al. were, they wouldn't need to fund them at as high a level. So yeah, blame them all you want - you'll be stupid doing so, but go ahead.

Alas, a radio geek friend of mine told me 100% peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks don't scale very large, and is not likely to be a feasible solution to the Internet becoming less and less fair and more and more owned by fewer and fewer corporate interests. Oh well.

I hope he's wrong:-(

I've been doing a lot of research into this and a most of the protocols for the distributed networking that would be required already exist, they'd just have to be brought together, and then we'd need some long-range wireless hardware - maybe a WiMax or "super wifi" router.

The FCC was bought, sold, and paid for long ago. That's why the vast majority of our spectrum 'belongs' to megacorps, and only the thinnest little slivers are given back to us.

Can you imagine how much more useful WiFi would be if we had more than 3 non-conflicting channels that are completely trampled by microwave ovens? (OK, so there's also the 5GHz band, but I mean a nice big block, all in one clean band.) Cordless phones wouldn't conflict, wireless in-house TV distribution would have happened long ago, and more. Imagine if there was a decently sized band of relatively long-wavelength (sub-GHz), spectrum available that allowed a couple watts total / a few tens EIRP in a narrow beam. We could very easily set up private point to point links everywhere, instead of just barely getting them to work as it is now.

Or standards... The rest of the world uses DVB. The US gets ATSC, which is a mess of patents. Same deal with HD radio.

I'm not the least surprised that the FCC isn't protecting your interests, and is doing everything that keeps huge corporations in control of communications. It's what they do best.

I don't think people are surprised, but very let down. "Expect the worst, hope for the best", right? Everyone expects corporate money and influence to win, but hoped nonetheless that this guy they elected would take a stand or that the internet would be a bastion of relative freedom.

I know it's a crazy thing to say around here, but owners of the telecommunication companies are just as deserving of having their needs served by government as the consumers of telecommunications services. Government doesn't exist to protect the rights of citizens who are consuming over those who are producing. I don't know much about this ruling, but in general a compromise between those interests is a good thing.

I know the corporations are the 'bad' guys, but you don't want government playing favorites. Maybe it will make you feel better to know that pension funds, which keep a great many of our elderly working class and middle class housed and fed, are among the largest owners of those corporations.

Again, maybe this ruling is different, but it wouldn't be a compromise if everyone was happy.

Government doesn't exist to protect the rights of citizens who are consuming over those who are producing.

This is absurd. The government should exist to serve only the needs of people. Treating a corporation like any other citizen is ridiculous, especially when you promote the interests of a corporation over those of the actual people.

The difference between corporations and citizens is that a for-profit corporation exists for the sole purpose of making money. In the case of ISPs, you have corporations trying to change the rules that the Internet was based solely for profit. Even the idea that Internet service should be anything but a public good is ludicrous. So no, fuck telecoms.

By owning a corporation you don't magically lose the protections you enjoy as an individual. Having the money to invest in corporations should not buy you more representation than those that can't afford to, or choose not to, own corporations. It's not that groups of people deserve less protection; it is that they don't deserve more protection - the whole "Equal Protection under the Law" thing you mention. Corporations already provide protection from certain liabilities - we really don't need to be grant

It took me a minute to find the whole in your argument, as your reasoning seems solid on the surface. But there is a hole there. You say

Government doesn't exist to protect the rights of the citizens who are consuming over those who are producing.

Which is mostly true. But neither does government exist to protect rights of producers over consumers, or over other producers for that matter, which is what's happening here. You see the telcos and cable cos have been awarded exclusive rights to wireless spectr

I know it's a crazy thing to say around here, but owners of the telecommunication companies are just as deserving of having their needs served by government as the consumers of telecommunications services.

Why would this be the case? It's a government of the people, for the people. The needs of the people ought to be the first and only priority of the government. The needs of corporations should be met only because doing so meets the greater needs of the people. If the telecommunication companies want to have their needs met, they ought to align those needs with the greater public good, and I have yet to see compelling evidence that they are trying to do this. Instead, I see evidence of physical infrastructur

Could we actually get an article with some details, rather than an editorial about what the policy MIGHT contain?

Commenters here and at Huffington Post are seriously suggesting we have a second American Revolution because you didn't get everything you wanted on a Net Neturality policy change?

Jesus, get some perspective! I hope most of you realize that this is the first time Net Neturality is being tried in the US. At all. Anyone spending more than 5 minutes looking into Net Neutrality realize its a complex issue that can't be solved with "Don't discriminate." There are unintended consequences for any action they take.

You do realize that policies can be changed at a later date, right? They aren't written in stone. These policies make more sense than the alternative of doing nothing, and they make more sense than being heavy handed and creating more problems then they solve. If problems crop up, they can be dealt with.

Funny enough, if you look at the bottom of another heavily slanted Fox article [foxnews.com], you can find some actual information. The details seem much better than hinted at in the Huffington Post.

The rules would require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks -- including online calling services, Internet video and other Web applications that compete with their core businesses.

There is a tech solution. Invent it. Build it. Patent/open-source it. Sell it. Get it out there.

But DON'T just sit there whining that ulterior-motive politicians and bureaucrats won't do things your way.

One solution:Build a cheap, open, legal, spread-spectrum, compact, no-setup, easy network relay box. Set broadcast power within legal no-license limits. Make a gazillion of them, plug 'em in wherever you can. Make a giant ad-hoc network. You know what I'm getting at.

Heck, this should already be in place between the innumerable cellphones & wireless routers out there. Get the ad-hoc network big enough, and the individual load should be minimal and the total disruptions minimal. TCP/IP is intended to circumvent network failures, so long as there is a path. Make a path.

That was my first thought as well, but as we've seen time and time again, all the gov't has to do is pass a law that "any" form of digital communications (even a tin-can and string network) falls under the same set of rulings and the effort would be for naught.

A perfect example of this is Peer-to-peer. P2P was supposed to stop anyone from controlling what data user pass between them since there was no central server, but we see that the gov't put the brakes on that - not though technology, but through laws

To all of you saying that the telecoms paid for installing their nets and therefore should be able to charge customers differentially based on what they want to do, we experienced this before. In the 1800's, railroads paid for installing tracks around the country, then proceeded to play nasty games and were forced to be neutral by congress. This is not new. See here: http://www.bengarvey.com/2010/08/net-neutrality-and-the-railroad-business/

I'm still glad he won, given the screamingly terrifying alternative, but we all knew Obama was a corporate camp-follower when as a Senator, he voted to give AT&T a free pass for gleefully breaking wiretapping laws when asked by the NSA (who seemingly answers to no one).

I'm seeing both sides of this debate, corps and net neutrality activists, going all foamy at the mouth over this, and I'm not seeing any valid reasons one way or another. It seems to me that everyone is afraid of what could be in this, but nobody knows what *is* in it!

"The new FCC rules, for example, would prevent a broadband provider, such as Comcast Corp., AT&T, Inc. or Verizon Communications Inc., from hobbling access to an online video service, such as Netflix, that competes with its own video services."

From the HuffPo:

"Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road. "

If you've looked at Daily Kos in recent months, you'd know that most people posting there totally agree with the premise that Obama, while perhaps still not worse than W., is worse than any other president over the last century - including Nixon, who on many important matters (e.g. health care, full employment) was well to Obama's left, and who was no worse in getting bogged down in an unwinnable war for the sake of "honor"... or something.

Although, I still have to chuckle at all the passionate supporters at campaign time. They really were convinced he'd reinvent america, now with more unicorns and rainbows.

You sound like such a bitter person. And why is it that Obama can't get anything done? Is it because his plans are all wrong-headed? Or is it because no matter what he attempts, there is a group of reactionaries that going to be against no matter what and no matter what lies and other indecencies they need to commit? America has become so poisonous that even if the Messiah appeared in his full glory with the angels dancing in the sky, he would be unable to do a thing, because he had the wrong shade of opinion about gays or whatever. Against stupidity the gods themselves labor in vain.

I hate to break it to the corporatist crowd, but the ISPs built those networks with our money, from government subsidies. They received those subsidies to enhance our national infrastructure. If monopolists have the same property rights as everyone else, the free market dies. And if monopolists control infrastructure without oversight to ensure equal access, democracy dies.

Your lawmakers didn't put any conditions on those subsidies that allow you to dictate terms.

We don't need to have put conditions on those subsidies. If the cable companies don't play nice with their toys, we will take them away. We, the people, make the rules. If they are not behaving in a way that benefits society, we can change the law to deal with that.

Or to put it another way, those subsidies didn't come with any restrictions, but they didn't come with any promises either.

People who repeatedly bleat "you fail" without any citations to prove their points only weaken their position. I agree with those of your points which make sense, which is about half of them. But telling people who want decent service at a fair price to "find a new [ISP]" or "build your own ISP" is just insulting.

No matter how many times you repeat that the FCC and government bodies don't have the right to regulate this particular capitalist money machine, they clearly do. The FCC could just as easily ha

Thank you for your continued interest in what I think is an important line of debate to all, no matter which side they are on.

1) The court ruled that the FCC "has failed to tie its assertion" of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress. For some unfathomable reason, internet carriage has failed to be classified as telecommunications. Some "i" has not been dotted somewhere; some "t" not crossed. I don't know why. The FCC could just classify internet carriage as telecommunications. Then

In the context of wireless, it's not trivial. There are spectrum auctions, licensing, site acquisition and leasing, marketing and customer support. The fact that you call it trivial betrays a certain ignorance on the topic. It's not dial-up.

More importantly, the "entitlement-crowd" is also known as "the customer crowd". As it stands at this very moment, I have an entitlement with AT&T for data carriage services from my smart phone to any site I so desire. That entitlement remains as long as my chec

If your local municipality has locked out competition via a "Franchise Agreement", well, now is an excellent time to vote those bastards out of office, or start getting involved in local politics.

Thats funny, i thought that you americans did just that by electing someone who was FOR net neutrality. It didn't end up mattering who got voted in though, because as you are no doubt aware money = power, and it seems a "right wing liberal" is just a corrupt as a "right wing conservative".